The Last Laugh

The chosen one waits for her coronation

making speeches, shaking hands, kissing babies

passing herself off as

one of us

another downwardly mobile commoner

toting a list of grievances

Watch what she does, ignore what she says

we’ve seen her kind

before

The best and brightest are relics of Camelot

this is the age of dull and dumb

small and fearful minds

Duopoly party retreads strain to convince

us that they have the answers to

all that ails the nation

What they offer is more of the same

more salt in our wounds

Money has poisoned the landscape

legitimized callousness and cruelty

legalized bribery

turned avarice

from vice to virtue

made ghetto wages

acceptable

Laughing hysterically Karl Marx

watches the capitalists

cannibalize the structures that made

their wealth possible

Pirates of modern finance strip the value

from every useful enterprise

like jackals stripping the flesh

from a carcass

Wealth flows from bottom to top

and the poor are expected to compete

with the wretched of the world for scraps

The nation fails its senior citizens and

children

fails students and workers

fails forests and rivers

But when all is said and done

when the ruins smoke

and hiss

when the sky weeps

toxic tears

the rocks and the dust will have the last laugh